NEW ORLEANS โ After reports of a nationwide outage Thursday morning, AT&T said wireless service has been fully restored wireless service to all affected customers.
"We sincerely apologize," stated AT&T in a restoration announcement at 2:10 p.m. "Keeping our customers connected remains our top priority, and we are taking steps to ensure our customers do not experience this again in the future."
There were widespread reports across the country of an AT&T cellular service outage.
The outage was not allowing some customers to make calls, but they could still send SMS text messages. Some phones reportedly were showing an โSOSโ mode message which means the cellphone could still make 911 emergency service.
The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office warned affected customers not to initiate emergency services on an impacted phone in a non-emergency.
"If your phone is affected by the outage and your phone gives you the option to, 'call emergency services," and you click that -- YOU ARE CALLING 911!" St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office posted on social media on Thursday. "For those without cell service due to nationwide outages, please know that dialing 911 WILL STILL WORK regardless."
The outage impacted various major cities across the country including New Orleans. According to Downdetector.com, a website that tracks communication service outages, there was over 72,000 reports of service out nationwide and the New Orleans area was a major hot spot in that outage.
"Some of our customers are experiencing wireless service interruptions this morning. We are working urgently to restore service to them. We encourage the use of Wi-Fi calling until service is restored," AT&T said in a statement.
Many people took to social media to report their phones will not send or receive calls, text messages, or access the internet.
A select few Boost, Cricket, customers were also affected by the nationwide outage.
Despite some earlier reports, T-Mobile clarified in a statement their network did not experience an outage.
โWe did not experience an outage. Our network is operating normally. Down Detector is likely reflecting challenges our customers were having attempting to connect to users on other networks,โ T-Mobile said.
Verizon also released a statement saying, โVerizon's network remains fully operational. Some customers may have experienced issues this morning when calling or texting those served by another carrier. Our network continues to function normally.โ
It is unclear what caused the outage or when it will return to normal service. AT&T
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